Lacey Middlestead is a Montana native and freelance writer currently living in Helena, Mont. She loves meeting new people and helping share their stories. When she’s not busy writing articles for newspapers like the Independent Record and Helena Vigilante, she can usually be found indulging in her second greatest passion–playing in the Montana wilderness. She loves skiing and snowmobiling in the winter and four wheeling, hiking, boating, and riding dirt bikes in the summer.
Every year on December 31st, we bid adieu to yet another year and usher in—be it with great trepidation or glorious relief—a New Year. Regardless of how the past year has gone for us, the New Year always offers us a clean slate and a chance to start fresh with things. Many people take that opportunity to make resolutions about things like losing weight, being more spontaneous, quitting smoking or drinking so many $4 Starbuck’s lattes, or getting out of debt. I for one have never been much for making such resolutions since so many seem to peter out before the first bud of spring. And usually, I find myself crawling to New Year’s simply hoping that the next year will be easier and have fewer hardships. Simply surviving to another year feels like an accomplishment in itself.
But this year…..2015…...I feel is going to be my year! I feel like it will be filled with some of the happiest moments of my life. It will be a year for courage and bold action in the direction of my dreams. It will be the year I finally start a family of my own. It will be the time to cast aside all those things that have long weighed me down. It may very well be the year that defines all of the years to come.
I still feel no motivation to make a New Year’s resolution; however, I do propose the following bucket list of some of the things I fully intend on doing in the next year. For me, these things aren’t about trying to improve myself or quit bad habits. Rather, they are about ensuring that I rise to my full potential and embrace every piece of talent, strength and uniqueness God instilled in me. Bucket lists are typically comprised of the things people hope to do before they die. My bucket list is about doing things to remind myself that I’ve only started to spread my wings on my journey of life.
15 Things to Do in Montana in 2015!
1. Perfectly sidehill one time on my snowmobile.
2. Learn how to fly-fish.
3. Compete in my first triathlon.
4. Climb to the top of the nose of the Sleeping Giant.
5. Ride in the Cycle Greater Yellowstone Road Bicycle Tour—7 days of riding totaling over 450 miles.
6. Score a goal during a shootout for my first time in hockey.
7. Have an article published in my third magazine publication.
8. See the Northern Lights.
9. Win my first dirt bike race.
10. Clear the entire boat wake when jumping my wakeboard.
11 Pick enough huckleberries to make one of my fiancé’s favorite huckleberry cream pies every month for a year.
12. Watch the reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand.
13. Study the image and text on every single stained glass window it the St. Helena Cathedral.
14. Watch snow goose and tundra swans take off from Freezout Lake between Choteau and Fairfield during spring migration.
15. And my NUMBER 1 GOAL OF 2015……..EXIT MY WEDDING RECEPTION WHILE RIDING MY DIRTBIKE IN MY WEDDING DRESS NEXT TO MY HUSBAND!!